


(we were never) meant for each other

by thorkidumpster



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Human!Loki, Loki Has Issues, Loki-centric, M/M, Magical Realism, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Pagan Gods, Reincarnation, Small Towns, Thor Feels, Witchcraft, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2018-11-06 11:39:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11035452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thorkidumpster/pseuds/thorkidumpster
Summary: We were never meant for each otherBut I’m glad that even for a sheer momentIt felt like we were.This small town is driving Loki crazy--he knows everyone, knows their routines, knows their bad habits and peeves and juicy secrets. There's an itching in his soul, a promise that he was meant for bigger and better things, and a general discontentment that he's stuck in the middle of nowhere.But then comes a stranger who can't seem to leave Loki alone.





	1. i see fire

**Author's Note:**

> oh god, i know. a wip. i'm so sorry.

* * *

 

4am, and the sky through the window was dark. A neon sign advertised cheap, greasy meals in an irradiated red. In the corner of the empty diner, a waitress sat at a table, rolling knives and forks into paper napkins. She sang softly under her breath, a lullaby of some sort, in a language Loki didn't understand.

He sipped his oversugared and overmilked coffee. From under the napkin holder, a roach peaked out his twitchy antenna, assessing the situation. Loki had been flicking it away for the better part of a half hour, but the lure of his abandoned toast was too tempting.

Overhead, a pop-y English song played, the chorus predictable and catchy enough that Loki could hum along without knowing the song at all.

Loki stared at his plate, discontent.

Just another small town diner, in just another small town, filled with boring people leading boring lives. He shoulders ached, and his head pounded. He felt immeasurably old, like he'd lived this life a thousand times.

In three gulps, Loki drained his lukewarm coffee. The cockroach made a break for the set-aside toast, its legs pumping and its body a shiny brown-black under the florescent lights. A twitch of Loki's fingers sent it into a swift u-turn and scuttling back to its hiding place, shameless.

The waitress heaved herself up and moved to behind the counter, tapping away at the register. She was his favorite – 40, perhaps, and tired. Tired in the way that left bruises under eyes and gnarled the joints of fingers. But her hair was still lovely and brown, tied back in a careless braid. Loki wasn't sure where she was from, only that it wasn't from around here. He wondered if this is how she thought her life would turn out, and what brought her to a little town in the middle of nowhere.

But they never talked. She brought him his eggs and toast with coffee and left him the hell alone, which was all Loki wanted.

As she walked by the table, she dropped off his ticket.

Same as always.

Loki flipped through his e-book, not really paying attention. His phone gave a grumpy beep, reminding him that he'd been up most of the night, staring at it, without charging it. The screen dimmed, spiteful, when he ignored the message and kept reading.

More workers started to trickle into the diner, yawning and greeting each other with reserved voices. Getting ready, no doubt, for the breakfast rush. If there was even enough people around that it could be considered a 'rush'.

Vaguely irritated by the rising level of noise as the stove was started up and the dishwasher ran and people clacked around him, searing bacon and cracking eggs and heating breakfast breads, Loki rose from his seat. The roach immediately rushed out to nibble the bread.

Loki presented his ticket to a tired looking young man, roughly his age, and refused a receipt.

The diner's exit faced east, and the horizon was pink and orange. The sun hadn't quite risen yet, it was just hazily coloring the distance. If Loki looked behind him, he would have seen black and twinkling stars. This was an in-between time, trapped between sleeping and waking. This side of the world was yawning and rubbing its bleary eyes.

Loki set his feet towards home – towards the horizon, lit up in a way that he should have found beautiful, but only made him feel lonely instead. His house was tucked behind a strip of stores, and he rounded the edge of the long line of commerce and consumerism that made up half the shopping center. A big box store, same as anywhere else.

“ _Now I see fire, inside the mountain—I see fire, burning the trees...”_

Loki's head swiveled. In the shadows behind the between, a man leaned against the concrete of the walls. He stood in the same in-between the world was caught in, half hidden in dark and half exposed to the newborn sunlight. He was huge, his hair thick and blond, tumbling down his shoulders. His eyes were closed, lashes black smudges on cheeks that were dense with beard. His voice was a low rumble, singing a song that Loki sort of remembered, perhaps from a movie.

“ _And I see fire, hollowing souls—And I see fire, blood in the breeze. And I hope you'll remember me..”_

The man was paying him no attention, but Loki had the strangest prickling on the back of his neck, like the stranger was addressing him.

“ _And if the night is burning, I will cover my eyes. For if the dark returns, then my brother will die...”_

Loki fastened his footsteps. The deep, even voice followed him, forlornly bemoaning shadows on the ground and people screaming out. Every few steps, he glanced over his shoulder, but the man never moved, never raised his eyes to watch him.

They would be blue, Loki thought. Dark, like choppy waters and the sky before a storm.

He didn't know how he knew that.

He didn't want to know.

No one had followed him, yet when Loki reached his front door, his hands were shaking so badly he almost dropped his keys. When he finally got the damn thing open, he ducked inside and closed it quickly on that whole nonsense with the stranger. The stranger who didn't look at him, didn't even seem to notice him at all, and was doing nothing more than singing some movie song.

But Loki couldn't stop thinking about him. There was something else lurking, some old and dusty memory that scampered away when Loki groped for it.

 

* * *

 

 


	2. and the wheel turns

* * *

 

Luke's life, for all his disdain of his neighbors and the fellow people stuck in the same hellscape as him, wasn't one of any particular excitement. His mother raised him alone, and prodded him along the path that everyone was expected to follow—he started school young, made good grades, never got anyone pregnant. He trudged through life, always looking for some form of escape.

His mother, unfortunately, had always been one step ahead, from locking windows to denying Luke the chance to go over to friends' houses. It was as if she knew that Luke, given half a chance, would fly off without the slightest provocation, never to be seen again.

So mother bound son to her with emotional hoops of steel and in more than one instance, physical ones. Luke would lash out at her when he was younger, snarling abuse. It left tar black marks on his soul, because it just wasn't in his nature to hate his mother, and yet he couldn't stop.

Fariah Langston was unflappable.

She was also already up and awake when her son crept through the front door with the dawn. She leveled him with a flat, unimpressed stare. The whites of her eyes had gone sour yellow, but the green she passed to her son was still sharp. “Sneaking out again?”

“I'm 26,” Luke grumbled. 26 going on 17—he ducked into his room before his mom could stir up too much fuss.

Luke immediately went for the cigarettes, hidden in his dresser under a pile of socks. He tapped one out with shaking heads and lit it. The ember glowed hot red as he sucked in a long drag, then two, demolishing the first cigarette in a way that would've made him throw up at sixteen.

Halfway through his second one, Luke felt the tension in his stomach ease.

Why had he been so freaked out? Someone hanging out behind a store and singing—probably a drunkard, resting after spending the night ruining his liver. God, but this small town gothic was getting to him. Luke chuckled, smoke curling out from the edges of his mouth.

After finishing the second cigarette, Luke dodged his mother's attentions again to go to the bathroom and rinse the smell from his breath with minty mouthwash that stung fiercely and made his usually thin lips plump for a good fifteen minutes. As he stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, Luke briefly contemplated cutting his long hair, but dismissed it.

His mother, after all, hated his hair.

Nevertheless, Luke dawdled, if only to avoid having to avoid his mother again. He pissed, washed his hands, and brushed his hair. Turned his head left and right, running a finger along the jawline that never managed to grow more that a sporadic splattering of stubble. Careful, he tugged down the skin under his right eye, admiring the dark bruise and scarred veins. He was as tired as this house, as this town. If only—

Luke couldn't stay holed up in the bathroom forever.

By then, the sun had well and truly risen, and cheerfully stabbed Luke in the eyes. Walking through the living room was akin to blinding himself with a bright phone screen in the middle of the night. He groped blindly for his bedroom curtains, yanking them closed against the onslaught, but it was hardly effective. The time was fast approaching when the sun would set only for a handful of hours, and that was easily Luke's least favorite time of the year.

Even with his curtains securely closed, the sunlight bled through the edges.

Luke laid down clothes and all, intent on getting more sleep, because there was only so much caffeine could do against his terminal insomnia. Or was it insomnia? He could drift off fairly easily, but strange, vivid dreams plagued him—the gnashing of horse teeth and a man getting the skin of his back flayed, a woman's low chuckle and deep forests that Luke couldn't escape from. Acid dripping into his eyes.

He would always wake, heart racing, after only an hour of so of sleep. And he would roll over, punch his pillow into a different shape, and drift off again, only for another dream, equally disturbing, that would slip from his mind like water through his fingers with the coming sun.

He hadn't had a decent night's sleep since the winter equinox.

The house groaned around him, the whispering and bickering of old bones settling, pipes gurgling as his mother washed off dishes. Luke closed his eyes and inhaled through his nose. Just twenty minutes, just fifteen. Just a moment where he can rest, the constant thrumming of his discontent quieted.

Just ten minutes.

Just five.

Just—

Just—

There is an Oak in a clearing—the forest pushes away, afraid, trees bending outward and rustling faint warnings. Ancient, massive, with knotted bark carved with swirls that once, perhaps, had meaning in a distant time where druids wore leaves and hearts and antlers and paid due worship.

Naked branches fan out to block the red sky like arms reaching for supplication, and from each, a noose hangs. The bodies bloat in the sickly sunlight, stomachs bursting and tongues lolling—they stare at him with only one eye. They are alive still, caught rotting and watching and blowing in the wind.

Luke cocks his head, and thinks they rather deserve it for their insult to him.

With a jolt, Loki rolled over and gagged. _Jesus—_

He hand smacked around beside his pillow for his phone. It wailed a protest—only 5% battery remaining!—and Loki grunted. Only thirty minutes had passed.

Shaking, Loki tossed his phone to the ground.

He kept his eyes focused on the ceiling fan, creaking in a wobbly rotation. Too fast, too fast, but Loki needed the noises, needed to feel the air on his skin.

“Luke!”

Luke?

Luke startled. God, he needed sleep. Real sleep, deep sleep. His doctor, a rusted old man with dark skin and a mustache that blended with his nose hairs, had given him medicine to help him, but that was worse. He couldn't wake up, no matter what he dreamed. No matter what he saw.

Is it better to sleep, and dream of a woman birthing a snake, with its coiled body violently churning under the skin of her belly? Or not sleep, and forget his own name?

Well, Luke wasn't a goddamn philosopher, was he?

“Yes?” He croaked.

“I'm heading to work. Please take the laundry to the 'mat and run it—I left the quarters by the door.”

Laundromat. Loki shook his head. Laundromat. “Sure,” Luke sighed. Might as well do that now, lest he be tempted to falling asleep again.

Nevertheless, Luke laid in bed, trying to rest without closing his eyes.

He failed.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edited to add: noticed things switching up between luke and loki? that was completely intentional :D pay attention, that's going to be important later.


	3. ancient

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the small update :|

* * *

 

It was noon before Luke finally managed to go _—_ he left the house with two armloads of laundry, a headache, and a rusted old beater of a car that sputtered threateningly if he went a toe over 60mph. Still, he pushed his foot down on the accelerator, urging the car faster and faster, only easing up when he curved around behind the old feed store, because there was always a cop parked behind, waiting to catch speeders.

Loki would wave at them as he puttered on by.

The laundromat was a low, one story building that had been around roughly since the 50's. Decades of laundry detergent has soaked into the wallpapered walls and black and white tile vinyl floors. The smell of it lingered, a faint ghost that tickled Luke's nose and made him jump at the sound of footsteps in an empty building.

Some of the machines didn't work, and some of the ones that did had broken coin slots. But Luke had been coming here since he was a boy, either with his mother or on his own as an older teen, and he knew all their eccentricities—the dryer in the left hand corner never worked when it was raining. The middle washer was too weak to handle heavily stained loads. The coin machine would spit out an extra quarter if you hip checked it at just the right angle.

Luke loads up the laundry and slots up the coins, electing to choose machines that give a faster, if less efficient, wash.

He's bored already, bored and ready to leave. Pressure pulses in his temples.

He tucks himself into a creaky plastic chair, though, and waits. Always waiting, always reading, always...

The rumble of the machines is awful and clanking, but the steady cadence goes a long way for soothing his frazzled nerves. Luke turns his phone up to as bright as the screen will go, desperate not to fall asleep. He'll stay awake, dammit. He'll finish his book and just... just...

He doesn't know.

Right as Luke starts to lose himself in a novel—a tale of Vikings and fierce gods—the door clatters open and Loki jumps.

It's the guy, the one from behind the store, and he brings with him a fresh gust of air into the sweaty little building. It smells like pines, ancient things.

The man glances at him, only for a second, but it feels too long to Loki, like his eyes linger on the curves of his face, the bow of his lips, the hollow of his throat, even though they're on him then not. A heartbeat of time, caught.

He's got a canvas bag in one hand, bulging with clothes. Then the man sort of looks around, almost uncomfortable, like he isn't completely sure what he's supposed to do.

Loki rolls his eyes and goes back to his book. He's got no time for some hick that's never been to a washing station before. And yet—“Need help?”

The guy gives him a careless smile. “Be nice,” he says, his voice a little too soft.

“Alrighty.”

Loki swings his legs forward and lifts himself out of the chair, ambles over to a washing machine. “Load 'er up.”

The man nods and upends the canvas bag. Garments come tumbling out, and not that Loki's paying attention, but some of them don't look like they'd fit that big of a man—a suspicion solidified when a pair of perky pink panties lands on top of the pile, looking fresh out of the packaging and never worn. The lid slams down like a clap of thunder and Loki jolts a bit. _Fucking shit fuck—_

He rubs a hand down his face. Calm. “Okay, got your coins?”

After the man has slotted in four quarters, Loki points out the different buttons and settings, then starts up the machine. “It'll take about an hour.”

The man shrugs. “I have plenty of time.”

And god, if Loki's can't relate the _that_ feeling...

Just as Loki's sitting back down in his spot, then man speaks up again. “What's your name?”

“Luke,” Loki replies, and pulls the book back up on his phone.

_And with a mighty roar that shakes the lightning from the sky, Mjolnir held high,—_

“Thor.”

Loki startles. “Excuse?”

“My name,” the man says, quiet, “is Thor.”

“...oh,” Loki replies, tempted to ask when and where he requested that information. _If you don't have anything nice to say..._ , his mother chimes faintly in the back of his head. “Okay. Helluva name.”

Thor just smiles, a little too familiar, a little too sad.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> whelp, you can check me out at thorkidumpster.tumblr.com, if you liked this fic. i should be updating this fairly frequently :)
> 
>  
> 
> (famous last words lmao)


End file.
